An adjective is a word used to modify (or describe) a noun or pronoun. An
adjective usually answers one of these questions: Which one? What kind? How
many?

Example:

I went to a crazy party last Halloween.

She has a really strange voice; it's more rough
and rugged than you'd expect.

He's one of the tallest people I know.

Sometimes pronouns function as adjectives. Some or many can answer the
question "how many?" and therefore sometimes function as adjectives.
This is one case in which adjectives and pronouns become confusing. Itís a case
of form verses function, and itís really not that important.

Example:

Some will go to the party. (Here some functions more as a pronoun
than as an adjective)

Some people will go to the party. (Here some
functions more as an adjective than as an
adjective because it modifies/describes people.)

Exercise:

Underline each of the following adjectives in the sentences below:

I had a really goofy, but
brilliant, philosophy professor in college.

He was a tall and lanky man
who was about 60 years old at the time

Because he was also a priest,
he wore black clothing most of the time, but he delivered the most
colorful lectures in class.

He used to get so into his
amazing lectures, that he would sort of lose control of himself.

He wore these nerdy glasses
that were thick and awkward on his face.

One day while he was
lecturing, he crawled on top of a small wooden table sitting in the corner
of the room.

As he talked he wrapped his
arms around his skinny legs and pulled his knees up into his chest.

He looked like a little ball,
wrapped up on top of the table, talking to a group of captivated students.

During the middle of one of
his most interesting lectures, his nerdy glasses, which he had had taken
off and propped up on the top of his balding head, and held in place by
only his thinning gray hair, began to teeter off to one side.

He was concentrating so hard
on what he was saying that none of us wanted to say anything about the
dangerous situation his glasses were in.

It was a very funny situation
because several students noticed that we all had worried looks on our
faces and were fearing the same thingóthat his glasses would fall off his
head and brake into tiny pieces on the hard classroom floor.

Then it happened. The glasses
fell, but he grabbed them with a magnificent and graceful swipe of his
right hand.